Nope, 1651 AD with the development of fun house mirrors and mirror mazes as a form of entertainment. Some Dutch guy saw the Palace of Versiles mirrors in France and got all weird. At least a portion of what is inside that haunt there is a small mirror maze.

That is a cool picture and probably from Europe and it took 20 or 30 years to get adorned like that. They followed the circuses in europe that were big time around 1840 ish.

Jim Warfield maintains how scary the cave man days were and I contend it is the circus and gypsy wagons of migrant workers, being able to set a bunch of things up and move on after making an income. All we know is no current haunt consultant was there at the time or had access to a time machine.

The first haunted house is probably in Warehouse 8

Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

good to see u again greg. and yes i looked at the pic again and it said normans ghost show circa 1900. so im assuming its a way earlier date. zombie i found it on a facebook page called strange and interesting things. they have other pics of creepy clowns from way back also

As Herman Mudgett was in jail, and going to trail for killing numerous people in his odd house/building he had constructed in Chicago someone was taking people through it and collecting money for the experience.
He hired and then fired numerous work crews to build it so maybe none of them realized what they were actually building? He had gas chambers, doors that opened with no stairs, so someone would fall to their death, he had holding cells, a slide for dead bodies to the basement where he conducted experiments to see how far he could stretch a dead body? (?)
The acid vat awaited to release the skeletons which he then sold to medical collages, no questions asked, I guess?
He picked on wealthy Widows.
As they hung him he was supposed to have said:"I'm Jack the R... !" (Very doubtfull)
Then someone torched the place, they didn't appreciate that sort of "tourism" in those times, it was 1893.
A post office replaced Murder Mansion.
Before all this happened there was some grave robbing happening about 40 miles to the west of Chicago. After a young girl died, some men watched her grave and saw someone digging her up and carting her away. They followed them to a medical college, they returned with an angry mob demanding they return her body.
The owner of the College denied involvement from a window of the College. He was shot and killed by one of the angry mob, they went in an found her body. The Medical school students had no clue this was happening and had refused to back up the school owner in the face of the mob.